Newsweek reporter Andrew Romano, a specialist in the youth vote (because he's Princeton '04), attempts to describe how he found the under-30 generation adores the marital bliss of the Obamas in this week's magazine. The article is headlined "Our Model Marriage: The Obamas have the kind of relationship millennials aspire to." Romano described how his contemporaries were much wilder in their enthusiasm for the Obamas than they were for rapper Kanye West, and how they have become for young voters "the swooniest couple around."

Kanye West is a tough act to follow -- unless you are a middle-aged couple slow dancing to tuba music. It's unlikely that anyone watching last month's Youth Inaugural Ball on TV noticed much difference between how the crowd of millennials welcomed the Louis Vuitton don and how they reacted, a few minutes later, when Barack and Michelle Obama took the stage. But if you were actually in the audience -- like me, and my eardrums -- the change was impossible to ignore. The young people screamed. The young people sighed. Several young people even began to weep. "I hope my husband looks at me like that someday," said one girl. When the song stopped, Obama leaned into the mike. "That's what's called 'old school'," he cracked. The new-school crowd responded like a bunch of banshees.

We've noted how CNN's John Roberts asked it last week, only to get politely rebuked by colleague Dana Bash, and how ABC News's Bill Weir picked up on Saturday with a similar question about whether Gov. Sarah Palin (R-Alaska) can handle being vice president while also being a mother of five, only to have colleague Cokie Roberts object:

Without mentioning Weir, Roberts said questions "about who's taking care of the children...traditionally has very much angered women voters when women candidates are asked those questions and male candidates never are."  

But rather than the question getting old and stale and falling into disuse, the liberal media are using the revelation of Palin's daughter's pregnancy to breathe into openly questioning whether the Alaska governor should be running for vice president at all.

As Newsweek's Andrew Romano noted in a September 1 Stumper blog post covering a luncheon with former Sen. Fred Thompson:

After Barack Obama’s more-than-enthusiastic greeting by many attendees at the UNITY convention for minority journalists in Chicago on Sunday, some in the media have expressed outrage that some have now questioned their objectivity, despite the appalled reactions from some of their own peers to the display and the live video shown on CNN (at right).

April Yee wrote on Andrew Romano’s blog on Newsweek.com on Monday about the question of whether minority journalists can cover the Illinois senator objectively. She quoted Ernest Suggs of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, who objected to this question even coming up in the first place: "That mindset needs to change.... It is offensive that because we have the same color or the same agenda, our journalistic ethics and responsibilities go out the window."

Suggs might have a point, since two of the biggest cheerleaders for Obama in the media are white men: Lee Cowan and Chris Matthews.

"Rudy v. Romney: Which one is least [sic]* liberal?"

So asks a teaser headline in the Newsweek.com front page "light box" slideshow (pictured at right). The link takes readers to Newsweek assistant editor Andrew Romano's article, "Forget 'Conservative.' Who's the 'Least Liberal' GOP Frontrunner?"

Conservatives examining whom to support in the primary elections might do well to welcome an examination of both candidates and how they have departed from GOP orthodoxy on numerous social and fiscal issues. And while Rudy and Mitt aren't the only candidates being grilled by conservative activists for less-than-conservative positions, it's a good starting point, even if much of Romano's piece is snarky in tone (which it is).